Summer 2018 Week 9

Introduction

It’s that time of the season when I’m beginning to lose interest in the currently airing anime, but I’ll continue to power through it because apparently I hate myself. There are a couple of series I wouldn’t mind dropping completely, but at least they give me something to write about.

Island is one of the aforementioned anime I would consider dropping, even this late into the season, if I wasn’t planning on writing a full review of it once the season’s over. There was a lot going on in this week’s episode, and not much of it made sense, but I’ll try to keep this brief.

First of all, there was a new OP/ED combo which were snow themed, the reason for why is semi-explained in the episode and I’ll get to that in a bit. The entire episode also takes place in the distant future, and for most of the episode it isn’t clear whether the events that are happening is a prequel, a “sequel,” or part of the current timeline.

The island is the only habitable place left on Earth in this future, and the rest of the world is covered by a thick layer of snow and ice. It’s unclear why this is or why Setsuna has anything to do with the world going into an ice age. Also, everyone is governed by the church, which is a militaristic state now.

In this world, the people are separated into different casts as well. Those in the church are at the top, those in the middle are considered citizens, and those at the bottom are stateless criminals who are marked for death.

Sara is part of the church, Rinne is in the middle class, and Karen is the leader of the underground rebellion. Although Setsuna has arrived in this time from the “normal” timeline, this doesn’t seem to be the time he originated from either.

Of the three girls, Rinne and Sara appear to be older than their normal timeline counterparts, Sara much so, but Karen appears to be quite a bit younger. Karen also apparently trades sex for information in this world, which seems like a fairly drastic character change.

So, as I mentioned, nothing in this episode makes much sense, and not much is actually explained. As a final note, the title is no longer Island, but is now Never Island. It’s unclear whether or not this new title is going to stick around for the rest of the season.

The final match of the tournament will likely take place next week, because instead, this week’s episode was all about the relationship between Ayano and Connie. Connie wants Ayano, Uchika, and herself to all be a happy family together, but Ayano refuses.

However, before we get to that point of the episode, Ayano, Connie, Erena, and Yuika all go to some sort of arcade together which is full of a character known as Wei-Wei. Wei-Wei is apparently a whale shark and is Ayano’s favorite character because she’s mentally five years old.

Connie wins a Wei-Wei key chain to give to Ayano as a way to become her friend, but then Yuika wins a Wei-Wei backpack and gives it to her first. After that, Connie doesn’t want to give the key chain to Ayano because her gift will be out-shined by the backpack.

Eventually Connie works up the courage to tell Ayano how she really feels, but Ayano won’t listen. Instead, she suggests they play each other in a game of badminton, which Connie agrees to thinking it will be a nice, casual match.

However, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Ayano goes all out against Connie who gives up partway through the match and asks Ayano why she won’t be a family with Uchika and her. Ayano tells her that she won’t be a family with them because she’s given up on Uchika.

The episode ends with Connie going back to her badminton club friends and wishing to one day introduce Uchika and Ayano to them, and with Ayano going home only to be greeted by Uchika.

The royal family has the power of the titans, whatever that means, as well as the power to alter the memories of the people. However, this memory altering power doesn’t work on two clans, the Ackerman clan and the Oriental clan. Mikasa is a member of both in case you’ve forgotten.

Eren’s father also had the power of the titans and used it to kill the royal family with the exception of Rod Reiss who managed to escape. He then passed this power on to Eren by turning Eren into a titan and having him eat him, gaining his power, and also his courage.

It’s also revealed that Mikasa, Levi, and Kenny are indeed all related. Mikasa is a member of the branch Ackerman family, Kenny is a member of the main branch, and Levi is the bastard child of Kenny’s sister. As members of the Ackerman clan, they all have special powers of some sort.

The Ackerman clan was also once known as the sword and shield of the royal family, but something happened which created a falling out between the two. It seems as though Kenny’s ultimate goal is to reforge the alliance between the Ackerman clan and the royal family, but he’s likely just being used by Rod Reiss.

Minori is pretending to be our wife, so you know what that means. That’s right, it’s time to ditch her and move on to our next fiance like we did with Yui. While Minori is one of my “best girls” of the season, the next girl looks pretty cute too so we’ll see if she can beat Minori.

After pretending to be married, Minori gets embarrassed and goes all tsundere on us. Later, she says that we can bathe together if we get married, and suddenly we agree to it. Apparently we have our priorities in order.

This week Ainz reminded us that he is, in fact, the villain of the series. He has all of the intruders in Nazarick either captured or killed in horrific ways, including the four main Workers who were teleported into the colosseum to face him directly in battle.

The girl who was saving up money as a Worker to run away with her younger sisters is the character everyone was rooting for as watching this episode. This is exactly why her death was the most emotional stunt Overlord has ever pulled off.

Ainz originally allows her to escape due to the pleas from her comrades, but then sends Shalltear after her to kill her anyway. He tells Shalltear to show her the fear of almost escaping, only to have her will broken when she realizes she’s going to die.

I don’t remember what that girl’s name was, but she didn’t deserve that. At the very least, her body didn’t go to waste. Entoma got her vocal chords, Demiurge got her skin, because he’s a creepy guy, and the rest of the parts were used as well for various things.

However, the best part of the episode was when Ainz took off the ring which had been concealing his magic power and the mage-girl immediately puked rainbows due to his immense strength.

At the end of the episode, after the credits, we learn that it was the emperor who sent the Workers on their expedition into Nazarick, not Ainz himself as I had previously assumed. In retaliation, Ainz sends Aure and Mare to the Empire’s capitol to give a message to the emperor.

They tell him that Ainz expects an apology, and then they kill everyone in attendance as an upfront payment. If no apology is given to Ainz, he has declared that he will destroy the entire empire. So, as I said, Ainz reminded us this week that he’s the villain of the story.

This week we were introduced to another Imperial Knight who’s also a paladin and who hates anyone who worships, or associates with worshipers of, the demon lord. Incidentally, Diablo has been referring to himself as the true demon lord all over town.

The two of them get into a fight and Diablo reflects the paladin’s magic back at him, turning him into a statue (temporarily). This is unlikely to be the last time we see this character, but that was all of his screen time for this episode.

Shera also brings a new “character” into the series in the form of her summon. She summons a small bird which she then makes a pact with. By using the bird’s powers, Shera is able to see through the bird’s eyes, which she can use in conjunction with her archery skills.

Shera also learns that the demon lord is sealed inside of Rem when the Fallen girl Diablo once defeated in battle appears while they’re bathing and reveals Rem’s secret. The Fallen doesn’t yet join the harem, but she does agree to teach Diablo how to resurrect the demon lord without killing Rem.

The Fallen want the demon lord to be revived because they worship it, and she says they also don’t want Rem to die because they’ll worship her as the demon lord’s mother as well. Diablo, on the other hand, wants the demon lord revived simply so he can kill it again.

The gang also decides to tell Cristela that the demon lord is sealed inside of Rem because they believe that she’ll be on Rem’s side, despite Diablo’s warning that although she’s their friend, she’s still an Imperial Knight. Nothing comes of Cristela learning this yet, but I think she’ll likely betray the gang at first, then save them in the end.

The first half of this week’s episode was from the perspective of Akari, because otherwise she wouldn’t really have a purpose for being in this series in the first place. That said, I’m beginning to like her character more, especially how she wears a single garter that doesn’t hold anything up.

As the manager, Akari gets the tournament bracket for the other girls in the beach volleyball club and finds out that only one of the two pairs can actually get through to nationals. They had previously agreed to play against each other at Nationals, but now this tournament will have to do.

She then gives all the girls matching hair ties to show that they’ll always be friends no matter what, because apparently she thinks they need something like that to remember they’re friends. But that’s okay, Akari is trying her best. Maybe one day they’ll call her Akarin if she keeps trying.

In the tournament, both teams make it through their first rounds without any issues. In the second round, however, team Harukana go up against a pair who want to defeat team Eclair and get their revenge for another tournament three years prior.

Team Harukana easily defeats this pair though, and I’m not even entirely sure how they made it that far in the tournament. They were obviously pretty bad at beach volleyball, so who lost to them?

The final round of the tournament will be between teams Harukana and Eclair, and the winners will go to Nationals! I’m assuming that team Harukana will take the victory because they’re the protagonists, but I’m always glad to see my expectations subverted when it comes to plot.

Danny offers to give Zack some medicine in return for Rachel’s eyes after he learns that Rachel wants Zack to kill her. However, Zack declines because he says she’d be boring without her eyes. But what about if he took her eyes out after killing her? Surely that wouldn’t be a problem.

Meanwhile, Rachel gets the knife Zack asked for as well as some bandages for his wound from his room. But, once she arrives back on the floor he was waiting for her on, he refuses to let her bandage him up and recoils when she tries to touch him. Hoe does take the knife though.

The two of them then head off to find where Danny has disappeared to by following a trail of his blood which as been slowly dripping out of the wound Zack gave him at the beginning of the series.

Before Rachel was reunited with Zack, however, she was chased down a hallway by a giant snake which turns to have just been a hallucination. I bring this up now, because when the two of them are searching for Danny, an actual giant snake attacks and is killed by Zack.

The episode ends with Zack bleeding out on the floor once again as Rachel goes off on her own to find Danny and get the medicine from him. She’s armed with Zack’s knife after it’s revealed that her handgun is out of bullets.

This episode focused on the various kinds of T cells. The Killer T cell and Commander Helper T cell used to be friends/rivals back when they were kids, and there was another kind of T cell with them, but I forget her name and she didn’t seem all that important.

It’s basically just a story about how the various kinds of T cells split up and become unique as they grow, although none of this was actually explained because they all passed the same test and still ended up in different roles. I guess in the end the type of T cell one turns into is completely random.

The T cells essentially all live in a military boot camp when they’re young, and then the final test is an exercise in which they have to identify and defeat a fake virus infected cell while not attacking any good cells. It’s at this stage that most future T cells get eliminated from the course.

The Dendritic cell was also in the episode just going around and taking pictures of everyone else because recording things is his job. He’s also seen showing an old photo album to the current Naive T cells which is what sparks the flashback to when Commander Helper T cell was a kid.

This episode wasn’t very good, and I think it took away from what little this series had going for it. I always knew that this anime was roughly based on Norse mythology, the title is enough to give that away, but apparently this anime is Norse mythology.

That is to say, Yuuto is living in the world and time which later becomes Norse mythology. His actions roughly line up with the Norse myths, and it seems as though his name is even mistranslated at some point to become the name of an invader who destroys the realm of the gods, Yggdrasil.

So, although I make fun of all isekai anime taking place in a world called Yggdrasil, at least this one has an actual reason for the world being called that. However, I have some mixed feelings about this turn of events in the series.

On one hand, I think it’s pretty stupid that the world Yuuto was sent to turned out to simply be the realm of Norse mythology, and not one loosely based on it. However, on the other hand it’s a fairly unique idea as far as isekai anime I’ve seen go. But remember, it’s still stupid.

The revelation about the world Yuuto is trapped in comes from his girlfriend back home, Mizuki, asking her friend’s cousin, who just so happens to have a doctorate in archaeology, about the world. She’s the one who determines Yuuto is living inside the world which eventually becomes myth.

It’s also mentioned that Mizuki’s name, if it was mistranslated, could end up being the name of Yuuto’s wife in the myths. However, this doesn’t give Mizuki any solace because the two of them are also killed in the myth, so that isn’t looking so good for Yuuto’s safe return.

At the end of the episode we have an interesting thing happen though. Mizuki cries on the mirror that connects the two worlds and it seems to have spawned an evil version of herself in the same world as Yuuto. Now, although this is a bad anime, I’m going to make a prediction and see it through to the end.

I think that Yuuto will make it back home to his world because this doesn’t seem to be the kind of anime that’s going to kill off the protagonist, but then why does he die in the myth? Is his disappearance mistaken for him dying? Not quite.

I think an evil version of himself is left behind in the world along with the evil version of Mizuki and it’s actually the evil versions of them both which end up conquering and destroying the world, and thus turned into myths. This would resolve all of the current events in the series.

Conclusion

I don’t know why I always seem to write more about the anime I don’t like when doing this weekly post, but that’s it for the ninth week of the Summer 2018 anime season. If you enjoyed this post let me know in the comments or by leaving a like.

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